The case for investing in preventing men's violence against women and girls

Key findings and preliminary recommendations of The Case for Investing in the Primary Prevention of Men’s Violence Against Women and Girls

Purpose of the Research: This research has been funded by the Open University’s Open Societal Challenges to look at the existing evidence base and put together a case for support that urges the Government to invest in primary prevention.

Key Finding 1

This report has found existing research that shows there are effective frameworks that have been used in initiatives in the UK and internationally that reduce violence against women and girls (VAWG). Examples of work that challenge our understanding of gender stereotypes and that engage men and boys were particularly successful. This work is called primary prevention.

Key Finding 2

Some of the evidence we looked at states that this work is critically underfunded and that violence against women and girls will not be halved in a decade without investment in primary prevention initiatives.

Key Finding 3

The lack of funding into primary prevention programmes causes an inability to provide interventions at scale with robust systematic monitoring, evaluation and evidence-building.

This makes programmes harder to evaluate individually and to compare with other programmes. In addition, the research found a lack of good data about primary prevention collected nationally. This means there is no national standard for primary prevention programmes to measure their effectiveness against.

This hinders the development of effective national approaches and national investment.

Key Finding 4

Primary prevention in schools needs to include teaching staff not just children. The research found that the attitudes and behaviours, especially language, of staff perpetuated sexist gender stereotypes.

The evidence shows a whole-school approach including pupils, staff and the wider community is needed.

Key Finding 5

The research shows the scale of online abuse and harassment that women are experiencing. It also highlights the inadequacy of the legislation, policy and guidance about tackling online and tech facilitated violence against women and girls. The evidence shows that legislation and policy in the UK have heavily focused on service delivery and not on taking a rights-based approach.

Preliminary Policy Recommendations

• The government should fund large scale primary prevention initiatives based on successful frameworks which include robust monitoring and evaluation data.

• The government must adhere to their state obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Istanbul Convention, particularly with regard to the prevention of VAWG.

• The government should commission the ONS to carry out yearly national attitude surveys, with disaggregated data including online and tech facilitated VAWG.

• The Department for Education should develop their guidance to schools to implement whole-school VAWG prevention focused on addressing the attitudes and behaviour of staff.

• The government and Ofcom should adopt a human rights-based approach to online safety, aligned with Council of Europe standards, and these protections should be embedded into law.